


Three Stages of Winchester Grief

by Avyniea



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brothers, But you can squint it in if you want, Dean Reacting After Sam is Stabbed, Family, Lots of Angst, Not Slash, POV Dean, Spoilers for S02E21-22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7942666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avyniea/pseuds/Avyniea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's POV while Sam is dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pretending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second night after.

It's quiet and it's cold, and there's a soft slow drip pattering in counter point to the wind's gentle howl on the other side of walls too thin to really keep any of it out.

Eyes closed tight Dean pretends to sleep. No one is there to question his performance but he thinks, maybe, if he pretends hard enough he'll slip under, he'll forget why he's on the floor and who is on the shack's only bed. Dean pretends Sam is asleep too.

Not two days cold, spine severed, eyes glazed. No. Just asleep. 

Dean took the floor cause Sammy always gets the bed, and its too narrow for two. He closes his eyes tighter, squeezes the pillow half under his head, half held in his arms, tighter. 

His whole being has been winding ever tighter since his brother fell to his knees in the muddy grass. He knows, like Bobby knows, that eventually he'll twist himself so tight he'll snap, snap right in half.

But he's not quite there yet. He promised Bobby he would try to sleep. He lied. He is only pretending.  
With his eyes closed he pretends he is ten years old, in some dump John dropped them off at, staying only long enough to push a wad of mixed cash into Dean's hand and mutter the familiar admonition 'Take care of your brother, Dean.'

He pretends he didn't fail to do the only thing that ever really mattered. That Sam is six, too quiet for a kid his age, eyes too big in his still baby face. Eyes that look with trust only to his brother. Because Sam loves Dad, he misses Dad, but he trusts only Dean. 

He remembers chubby little fingers wrapping around his hand when Sam was even younger, the thumb of his other hand immovable in his mouth, with a ratty little bunny they found abandoned in an unremembered motel room a year before tucked under his arm. Those eyes, washing him with a trust so deep, a belief in Dean's infinite power to keep them safe so unshakeable that he can fall asleep in the back seat of the Impala while Dad tracks monsters, howling barely out of sight; and sleep through the night because his head is on Dean's lap. 

That kind of blatant, whole-heart worship isn't something a seven year old can wrap his head around, let alone stop his heart or soul from soaking in like water through a seive, till he was addicted to it. He wanted all of it, he wanted, needed, to be the man Sam saw every time he looked at him.

More than anything else; the training or the hunting, having to fend for himself, Dean knows that the man he is today is made up of his flesh wrapped and stretched around the graven image that his Sammy thinks of as Dean.  
Everyday when he gets out of bed still exhausted and pulls on his steel-toes, its not the job, not the lives he saves, it's the expectation in Sam's eyes. He knows it's unconscious on his brother's part, Sam fully believes (believes, not believed) that he doesn't ask anything from Dean, doesn't want anything from him or for him, except maybe peace. But he's wrong. Deeper than his personality it's there, unchanged from the faith of a child, the unbroken belief that Dean is indestructible.  
An ass sometimes, annoying, cheesy as hell, with bad taste and disgusting personal habits; but unstoppable. Fearless and feral, but Sam is his cub and his cub is always safe.  
Even when Sam can't stand to be around him, even when he is across the country; Sam's deepest depth believes he is safe, so long as Dean breaths.  
And Dean, in turn, summons the strength to draw that breath, to be all those things, from the unbroken faith of his little brother.  
Seven-years-old or twenty-nine, Dean is Dean because Sammy believes it. 

They make a circle of two, point and counter point flowing out and back in. An endless call-and-response chorus that becomes cacophony when they are seperated, breaking them and the world around them. Together they harmonize, evening each other out and making all their otherwise lies into God's honest truth.

Sam isn't deluding himself that he is safe while Dean exists. Dean's existance makes him safe. Dean isn't pretending to be Dean because Sam believes he is, he is Dean because Sam makes it true. 

Except tonight; tonight, Dean is pretending


	2. Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third night, after Dean chases Bobby away.

It's night again; time doesn't really make sense anymore but it's dark outside, which means Dean is on the floor again. Not close to the slim bed, but not far either.  
The numb that has muted him since he held Sam and screamed his name is fading, and that scream is still there, waiting. There is no room inside for anything else.

Bobby is gone. Dean yelled at him until he'd left. It cost him, he needs to be alone, but it broke his silence.

He squeezes his eyes closed as hard as he can. It doesn't stop the first hot tear from forcing it's way down his face. His hands are are starting to shake and every breath is harder than the last. He swollows thickly, past the knot in his throat, trying to force down the press of nausea.

Panic. He knows the symptoms, one of the thousand things Dad taught him on hunts. Only knowing isn't calming him down now, it's making it worse. Worse because there is nothing to kill, no safety once the job is done.

Only one thing has ever made Dean feel safe since the night he carried tiny Sammy out of the burning remnants of his own childhood. Out on the lawn he had looked down at his crying baby brother and smiled. He had done it, he had saved Sammy. They were safe. Dean made Sam safe, Sam being safe made Dean safe. 

Now neither one of them would ever be safe again. 

A wrecked and broken sound forces it's way from Dean's throat, too inhuman to even call a sob. The wretched wail of utter loss.

His control shatters and his mind begins to babble, intermixing with the screams he doesn't recognize as his own; 'Without him, who am I? Who am I without Us? I'm no one, NO ONE nothing,emptylostbrokenfailureALONEnofamilynoSAM ohgodSamSAM!'

Dean is entirely curled around the pillow now, crushing it in a death grip with all four of his limbs. One hand is cramped around his amulet so hard he'll have to dig it out of the skin if he ever let's go. He tucks his knees up under his chin and his hoarse, silent, full body scream takes all his being inside it and tries to shake him apart for full minutes until he collspses back into broken, screaming sobs that don't seem to allow for the existance of any other thing.

Somehow, there is still one tiny, sheltered part of his mind that isn't screaming, and it pulses out its last defence; a collage of images, (the same ones that got him through four years of Sam at Stanford) of his brother, of course, each of the times his trust had been complete. The last image is new; Sam's face when Dean called his name just before the knife took him from behind. He had been absolutely certain that his nightmare was over the moment he heard Dean's voice.

A frozen shard of rebellion fractures through the screaming, leaving the edges tattered and momentarily retreating. 

No. 

He isn't even sure what that means, except that he does not accept this reality and if he has to break all of it to fix this, he will.  
He is up off the floor before he has time to allow any other thoughts to weaken his resolve.

He rips into his clothes with a speed and lack of care only matched by every other time Sam was threatened in a way that required Dean not-naked to fix. He fumbles through the shack, scattering debris that has no meaning until his mind and hands catch on the things he needs. He stuffs the objects into his pockets haphazardly, tucking the metal box under his arm. His calm is already returning like a tabard worn through long years of war. A mantle he wraps around himself, because he Is Dean, because Sam Needs Him.

He stops on the way out the door and looks down at the lifeless body that occupies the bed. 

"Don't worry, Sammy, I've got this. I'll be right back."


	3. Bargaining

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I guess I forgot to post this last part. Uhh, here it is, super late.

The box Dean buries does not contain Sam's lifeless body and that's all that matters.  
He smooths the road dust over top and stands in the center of the crossroads to wait. Patience is not a virtue when your family, your world, is gone, and he shifts constantly in a circle, watching all sides and muttering,  
"Come on!" half under his breath.   
Then, she is there; no puff of smoke or popping into existence sound, just there. Beautiful and deadly like a mirage of salvation. Except, in this case, the demon is his savior; or she will be if Dean can be smart enough, clever and careful on the razor's edge. He has fooled crossroads demons before, wrestled back lives from their grasp and walked away unscathed. Except now it matters, now it's personal. The Winchesters never seem to come out on top when it's their own they fight for. Dean wonders briefly if there is something more to that thought, something real like a deal or a curse; but the thought slips between the cracks in his fraying consciousness and he focuses sharp on the demon.   
Dean knows he isn't going to win this one, made his peace with it on the drive. He doesn't need to win, doesn't need to come out even. He just needs to not have failed. He just needs his brother, safe and whole. All else be damned.

Which is what he's offering, only thing he has to offer. She drives a hard bargain; knows she has him by the balls, up against the wall, pants down, all lubed up. He doesn't fight it, a little snark and banter aside, he bends over, grabs his ankles and is grateful for the chance. 

Ten years, he says. She counters with one. He had hoped for more but would have taken less. One month, one day; if she wanted to drag him back downstairs with her right then, as long as she'd let him see that was Sam okay first, Dean would have said yes, signed it in blood. But she just wants to make out over it. Dean is just damn fine with that.

She smells like sulfur, her lips flavored with brimstone. He knows its a promise of what's to come. It is the sweetest thing he has ever tasted. He dives in deep and gives her his best, absolutely-guaranteed-to-get-lucky, curl-her-toes-and-drop-her-drawers kiss, and it's done. Sealed and set in stone somewhere in the depths. 

As soon as she vanishes Dean hurls himself into his baby, and her down the dirt road back. To the abandoned town, the cabin, his brother, to Sam.   
The door rattles in its overwork frame when he yanks it open almost hard enough to take it off, its a near thing.   
He pauses, takes a breath, before walking into the room where he left Sam.  
Then he’s over the threshold, and there Sam is, just standing at the foot of the bed.  
“Sammy.” It's not a question, just a breath that's also a prayer,  
“Thank god.”  
“Hey.”Sam’s voice makes it real and Dean stumbles into his brother’s arms where they both exist again.


End file.
